Jazz Articles about Don Lanphere

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Don Lanphere, Northwest Sax Legend

by AAJ Staff
January 11, 2004

Submitted on behalf of Doug Miller.

The first time I met Don Lanphere was at Jazz Alley in Seattle. It was 1988, and I was playing a week-long gig there with James Moody. I went back to the band room to find Moody talking to a robust looking man. This person was wearing a beige sweater and a Greek fisherman’s cap, the latter being popular with saxophonists of the bebop era. Moody introduced me to the man, who of course ...

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Don Lanphere: Home At Last

by Joseph Blake
April 12, 2002

Veteran tenor saxophonist Don Lanphere is a modern Lazarus, a bebop-blowing master brought back to life by Jesus. The 73-year-old Yakima-bred musician was a teenaged fixture on the New York scene during 52nd Street heyday. He made his recording session debut with Max Roach and Fats Navarro in New York in 1948 and hung out with Charlie Parker at bebop’s birth. By the time Lanphere was 22, he had a heroin habit, an arrest record, and had lost his girlfriend, ...